


On Your Left

by captainpeggy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 15:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7898461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpeggy/pseuds/captainpeggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t meet people through deep, metaphorical debate. You meet people through <em>hello</em>s and <em>pass the salt</em>s and <em>nice weather, huh</em>s? You meet people when <em>on your left</em> becomes <em>nice running out there </em>becomes <em>you got a phone number?</em> Love at first sight is bullshit.The remarkable sentences don’t come till later.</p><p>So Sam never set much store in the faint words scrawled near his shoulder, never tried to analyze the messy script, never concerned himself with chasing down all the runners who ever passed on his left-hand side. It didn’t worry him. He didn’t know, and he knew he didn’t know, and he knew he wouldn’t know-- so he put his faith in the soles of his shoes and pounded out a rhythm on the pavement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Allegro

Sam started running when he was twelve.

It was a school thing, at least at first: everyone had to make a fourteen-minute mile to pass gym, and Sam had always been the slow one, so he’d needed to make an effort. Sneakers came out of the closet, alarm clocks buzzed at five A.M., and he made the mile in ten. 

The day after that, he woke up and was halfway out the door before he realized that he didn’t have to train anymore. His shoes were already on, so he went anyways.

And the day after that.

And the day after that.

The person who first brought up racing to him was his mom, a brief mention of an upcoming five-mile over breakfast. Not a suggestion, even, just pointing it out: that was how she did most things. Never pushed, never even nudged, just made aware.

Sam registered, ran it in fifty-six minutes, and that was the first time he heard the words aloud. Three-quarters of the way through the race, he heard the pounding of feet on the pavement behind him, the rough, laboured breathing of someone pushing as hard as they could go, and then:

“On your left.”

A woman in her fifties blew by Sam, and he froze in shock for a moment. The muscles in his legs twinged from the inaction, and he shook his head, snapping out of it and picking his pace back up. _Come on. Just run. Just run. One. Two. One. Two._

One, two.

One, two.

He swore he could feel the words on his collarbone stinging as he ran.

They weren’t uncommon words, not even an uncommon sentence: he had a friend whose mark read _Can I take your order?_ and another whose read simply _excuse me,_ phrases they’d heard so many times that they’d lost any real meaning. Sam supposed it’d be the job of the other person to react to their replies-- but what do you say to _excuse me?_ You say _oh, sorry._ You shift over, you say _is this okay?_ And your soulmate looks at the boring, common words printed on _their_ skin, and they think, _well, I suppose it’ll be their job to react to however I reply. If it’s them._

Sam wondered, sometimes, after that race, after another few and another few after that. He wondered whether he’d stepped aside to let his soulmate pass him, saying nothing in reply. He wondered whether they’d been beside each other for a moment, a brief feeling of solidarity in their matching steps, before his soulmate pulled ahead. He wondered about the cute brunette with her hair up in a ponytail, the grey-shirted teenager whose sneakers were such a bright shade of orange they’d have glowed in the dark, about the guy who pulled ahead of him in the last half mile two races in a row. 

You don’t meet people through deep, metaphorical debate. You meet people through _hello_ s and _pass the salt_ s and _nice weather, huh_ s? You meet people when _on your left_ becomes _nice running out there_ becomes _you got a phone number?_ Love at first sight is bullshit.The remarkable sentences don’t come till later.

So Sam never set much store in the faint words scrawled near his shoulder, never tried to analyze the messy script, never concerned himself with chasing down all the runners who ever passed on his left-hand side. It didn’t worry him. He didn’t know, and he knew he didn’t know, and he knew he wouldn’t know-- so he put his faith in the soles of his shoes and pounded out a rhythm on the pavement.

He ran.

He graduated.

He went to college.

CPR is done to the beat of _Stayin’ Alive,_ a timekeeping method that his Paramedic Skills 1 teacher joked wouldn’t be useful in a couple of years. Sam’s roommate laughed. “ _Stayin’ Alive_ is gonna be useful forever.”

The instructor grinned at him. “Maybe CPR’ll be the only reason people remember it.”

_Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive. Stayin’ alive._

_Ah, ah, ah, ah--_

Sam’s arms ached from crushing the dummy’s ribcage, but he closed his eyes, imagined a failing heart beneath his palms, and kept going.

“See this? Wilson’s got it! Stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive!”

There were a couple of girls in college, nothing serious: a Claire who was in his pharmacology and anatomy courses lasted a few months. Dark hair, tired eyes that seemed to sparkle anyways. She was pretty. She was smart.

“You know,” she said to Sam over coffee one day, “we’re not soulmates.”

“I know.” He took a slow sip, savouring the taste. “I’ve seen your words, remember?”

Claire glanced down at Sam’s collarbone, mark just barely hidden by the v-neck of his shirt. “The hell’s _on your left_ supposed to mean, anyways?”

Sam looked away. “It’s a running thing. So people know you’re passing them.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never run a day in my life bar racing to class.”

“Lucky guy, whoever _your_ soulmate is. Great words you got there. _Who’re you?_ ”

Claire sighed. “Doesn’t sound like it’ll be a great start.”

Sam looked down into his mug. “What were the first words I said to you?”

The ghost of a smile on her face. “I think it was-- _hi. I’m Sam. Please help, what the hell’s an epiglottis?_ ”

A grin crossed Sam’s features. “Sounds about right.”

“We going to stick it out till I find my confused stranger, or what,” said Claire, not really a question.

“I’ve got a runner to go fall in love with,” said Sam. 

“All right.”

“All right.”

“Good luck, then, Nurse Temple.”

“Good luck, ‘Medic Wilson.”

“Maybe you’ll bring me some dying gang members in a truck someday.”

One last smile from Sam, resigned yet content. “Maybe I will.”

Then it was over. They both graduated that year: Sam with a diploma in paramedicine, Claire as an RN with job offers across NYC. Sam brought in a couple trucks of dying gang members, but their shifts never matched up.

“I’m applying to the military,” said his partner one day, adjusting the lay of her stethoscope over her neck. “Going to go out as a battlefield medic. They’re desperate over there.”

“You should do it,” said Sam. “You’d be great.”

She would have been. Cool under pressure, steady hands, built like a tank-- that girl could deadlift 200 pounds on a bad day. She could probably lug a soldier off the front lines without breaking a sweat.

And she did.

On the official record, she saved forty-seven lives, but she couldn’t save her own. Sam laced his fingers together over the barrel chest of a middle-aged man, took a breath, and began to press. Ribs cracked under his fingers. _Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive. Stayin’ alive._

It took more epinephrine than they had to spare, but they got him back, heart tapping out a weak NSR by the time they got to the hospital. 

“I’m applying to the military,” said Sam to his partner that evening.

“You got a death wish?” replied the EMT.

“No,” said Sam. “But nobody in Afghanistan does either.”

He started running again, and he heard the beat of _Stayin’ Alive_ in his footsteps, and he made it a mile in 6:53. He scraped together his savings for a pool membership. He drilled a chin-up bar into his bedroom doorframe.

USAF Pararescue doesn’t fuck around. The indoctrination course is only two and a half months, but three-quarters of recruits don’t make it that far. By week 10, you’re expected to run six miles in forty-two minutes, swim four kilometers in eighty, and crank out fifty push-ups in one. If you get sick before an evaluation, you fail it. If your academics drop below an 80, they kick you out. If you come in over time on two runs in a row, you’re going home. They starve you of oxygen and demand you fight back. They shove you to the bottom of a pool with your hands and ankles tied. They make you march miles on three hours’ sleep. 

“Pararescue is crap,” said his roommate, the words _I’m looking forwards to working with you_ tangling their way up his arm. “Just go in as a field medic.”

“No,” said Sam.

“Bullshit,” said his roommate.

“You’ll have the place to yourself for a couple years once I’m in-- it’s New York, you can find another roomie easy. If you can’t, just do what you want with it, sell my crap, I don’t care.”

“What if you fail?” asked his roommate.

“I won’t,” said Sam.

There are times in everyone’s life when they turn off the path. Usually they aren’t times you notice as they’re happening: they start with an alarm that didn’t go off, with a wrong turn, with an unexpected grade or a conversation overheard in passing. You wander off, you don’t strike out alone.

Sam knew where he was going.

And that was it. His mother bit her lip when he told her, took a breath, pulled him into a hug. “Thank you, Sam,” she whispered in his ear. “On behalf of the people who won’t.”

He pulled his backpack off the security conveyor, re-tied his boots, slid his belt back through the loops of his jeans in a smooth movement. Folded his boarding pass into a pocket. 

“On your left,” came a hurried voice from his side, and a businessman with a pathetic attempt at a comb-over rushed past towards the gates. Sam paused for a moment, hands stilling over his bag. He caught sight of his own reflection in the windows of the airport, a faint silhouette against a field of planes.

He swung the backpack onto his shoulder and walked down the linoleum hall.

One step. He was twelve years old, runty, too thin, stumbling along the pavement in a stubborn race against nobody but himself.

Two. He was fifteen, and a participant medal sat heavy against his neck, the weight comforting.

Three. He was nineteen. _Stayin’ alive. Stayin’ alive._

He was twenty.

He was twenty-five.

He flashed his passport and got on the plane.


	2. Adagio

**LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE**

**29°23′03″N 98°34′52″W**

**IATA: SKF**

**‘Pipeline,’ /’pīp,līn/ n.**

**1\. a long pipe, typically underground, for conveying oil, gas, etc., over long distances.**

**2\. informal term for the two-year intensive training required to become a USAF Pararescueman.**

↳ **graduation of an indoctrination, or _indoc,_ course is frequently referred to as obtaining a ‘ticket to ride [the pipeline]’.**

The hardest part of it was the water. It was eight in the morning, and the pool looked like liquid pain distilled into clarity and funneled into a pit: the washed-out blue of the bottom was blurred, a faded smear of colour against the white tile.

Sam took a deep breath, loosening his weight belt ever-so-slightly and adjusting the position of his dive mask. Six men stood in a row beside him, lined up along the edge of the pool: all wore gray t-shirts, colours lighter than they’d been a few weeks ago. Chlorine did that. 

The instructor sized them up. “Remember. On my mark, I want to see clean dives, neat technique, and flawless ascents. No twists, no tangles, no _mess._ Enter the water.”

Six quiet splashes as the men slid into the shallow end. Sam felt the water rush over his body, soak his shorts, saturate his shirt, shoot a jolt of cold into his bones. The heavy belt pulled him down, but he stood up straight, fighting the weight.

“Ditch your equipment,” barked the instructor.

They ducked under. Motion sounds different underwater, but it’s by no means silent: Sam heard the bubbly exhalations of his peers, the _swish_ of their cupped palms, the pounding of his own heart in his ears, the involuntary, stifled gasp for air.

It was fifty metres to the deep end. Sam’s vision began to blur, and he wasn’t sure whether his mask was leaking or he was blacking out. His muscles cramped. His diaphragm pulled furiously at his lungs, an insistent spasm-- no air down here, _ow, OW--_

**1\. Fins together and pointed to the head of the pool.**

Shaky hands scrabbled at fin straps, pushing them off his feet, it was definitely his vision that was going--

**2\. Mask on top of the fins.**

BREATHE

BREATHE

BREATHE

GO BACK UP

gO BaCK u P

G o BC k u PP

go b ac k u p p p p

A ir ai r air ai r br eate sam b reathe

DON’T STOP NOW 

**3\. Weight belt neatly placed over the mask and fins.**

Coherent thought was a dream by then.

The thirty-pound belt fell atop the pile of equipment with a soft, muted _thud,_ and Sam rose, and all there was to contemplate were the meaningless syllables _don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,_ and then there was oxygen, there was air, and he sucked in a sweet, sweet lungful of it.

A second.

He raised a fist, triumphant, signaling his success: it was all he could do not to yell with excitement, and he probably would have if he’d had enough air to do it with. Twin gurgles as two soldiers popped up beside him, brief splashes from the other three, all unburdened by their gear, all with a fist in the air.

They stayed that way for a glorious moment.

“Retrieve your equipment,” came an order that reverberated off the pool walls.

_One. Two._

Sam dove.

_Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive._

_Stayin’ alive._

Over the next week, they started the day with running. Six laps at six in the morning on six hours’ sleep (five, really, if you accounted for calisthenics overflow the night before-- but the schedule didn’t). Six-six-six. Sam would have sworn they screwed with the schedule on purpose, but he didn’t think the USAF was witty enough for that.

Speed was the game. They weren’t being evaluated, but they would be soon, and it was time that counted, not form. You could crawl if you wanted, so long as you came in under the wire. Joints ached from impact, vertebrae cracked, lungs seized-- anything to shave off a second.

His throat burned from the exertion, legs cramping, demanding he slow down as he rounded a bend in the final lap. He coughed, forced himself to move. _Keep going, Wilson. Keep going._

The sun was beginning to spike over the horizon, jabbing bolts of light into the men’s eyes as they ran: Sam squinted blindly at the space in front of him, making out the fuzzy hint of asphalt. _One more step. One more step._ Sweat dripped from his face. His nose ran like a goddamn faucet.

_One. More. Step._

_Don’t stop now._

And then it came, from behind him, from beside him. A voice weak but undeniably stubborn, a drained yet somehow powerful grunt: “On... your... left.”

Sam didn’t look back, couldn’t look back, had heard the words so many times they didn’t mean anything, had five hundred more _one more step_ s to go. _Don’t stop now._ All that mattered was moving, moving a bit farther, finishing this so he could stop for a while. The rest of the world melted away in a haze of effort until it was just him and the pavement-- _one, two, three--_ a blurry silhouette to one side, stumbling past him as the two neared the barracks. A hundred yards, fifty. Twenty-five. Sam’s ankle rolled: he gasped at the sharp pain, gritted his teeth, kept running. Ten. Five. 

Done.

An instructor eyed him suspiciously from the starting line. “Walk it out, Wilson.”

 _I’m a paramedic,_ Sam wanted to say, _I know._

He walked it out.

“Hey!”

A hand on his shoulder.

“Wilson? Nice running.” 

Sam kept moving, sparing just a second to glance over his shoulder at the guy who’d passed him earlier. “I’ll get you next time.”

Was it his imagination, or did the other man flinch? 

“I’m-- I-- I’m Riley. Danvers. You know me as plain Danvers, I guess?”

“Don’t really know you as anything,” Sam said, not unpleasantly. “Aside from, y’know, _pussy_ and _runt_ and _shithead._ But I take the USAF’s generic nicknames with a grain of salt.”

Riley snorted. “Probably a good thing.”

“Sam,” said Sam by way of reply, holding out a hand as the two of them walked. Riley took it and shook firmly. “Nice to officially meet you, shithead.”

“Nice to officially meet you too, pussy.”

Riley smirked. “You said you take the nicknames with a grain of salt-- so we’re already at the insult stage?”

“Oh,” laughed Sam. “Pal, this is the army. It’s the insult stage 24/7.”

They’d just about lapped the barracks. The startlingly bright sun flashed out at them from behind the corner. Sam looked at his watch. “It’s 0629. Breakfast starts in a minute.”

“Wanna run?” asked Riley, a lopsided smile on his face.

Sam snorted. “Man, no fuckin’ way.”

They walked, Riley half a pace ahead, and Sam looked at the light shining through his close-cropped curly hair, thought about the words on his collarbone, and left himself a fraction of a second to hope.

Just a fraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while since I posted chapter one. Sorry about the wait! Hope this was worth it.
> 
> Thing rec: The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston. It's a YA book with dragons, socialism, and small-town Canada. All the good stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I know this looks like it's going to samsteve, and yes, it'll get there eventually-- but it takes a bit of a roundabout route. You'll like it. I hope.
> 
> As always, a thing rec in lieu of me gushing about how much I love you: Chelsea Cain's _Mockingbird_ run, which is currently ongoing, is one of the best titles Marvel's putting out right now and you should read it. Also, it has an all-female creative team, so you should doubly read it.


End file.
